Life is a journey. The destination is death. This blog is all about the musings of a sojourner in her thirties, curious about the stops, the fellow passengers, the driver(s), the conditions of travel and the highlights and lowlights. All the while in a place of tranquility: the sanctuary.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Dissidents of the 'Spheres - who exactly are they?

Sports is good. Sometimes we don't particularly excel at it, but it is the participation that counts.

Sometimes we make the mistake of indulging in a sporting endeavour without fully training ourselves first.
As a result, we end up with muscle aches and pains. Because the body has been forced to use muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones that have not been tipped off for the task ahead.

I walked onto a sportsfield with my last post. I wasn't fully trained up prior.

Time for a hasty retreat.
Back to the drawing board.
To reflect on the game a bit.
Because without the rules we won't know if we are winning, or losing, or even scoring any points at all.

Here is a first draft of the description of the game as I see it, with commenters' input. It may need some polishing.

The terrain
It's pretty rough. This is no astroturf football field. Nor an indoor basketball court. No soft landings here for anyone.
This is off-piste Montblanc. During an avalanche.

As a backlash to feminism, three 'underground' online movements have sprung up.
The first is The Manosphere, where men with all kinds of issues regarding women congregate to vent their particular tales, jokes, woes, problems and solutions. Where the older men teach their younger counterparts or contemporaries the principles of Game. These sites are usually 90% male in terms of readership.

The second is what I will call the Femosphere, where older - but not exclusively - and experienced men and women teach women how to become more feminine, i.e. the best women they can be, by presenting them with beauty, comportment and behavioural tips. Here, 90% of the readers are female.

And then there is a third kind, which, for want of a better term, I will call the Mixosphere, of which this blog, HUS, Bellita, Olive and Danny (to name a few) are part and parcel, and which straddles both camps, with roughly 50-50 distribution of male and female readers.
In this sense, the Mixosphere is the offspring of both the Manosphere and the Femosphere. It is some weird form of 'lovechild' between the two parent movements.
All three groups have the same function: to improve relationships between the sexes.

The players
It is not 'Team Man' and 'Team Woman' anymore. It's becoming rapidly clear that that is a losing strategy right there. It should not be a simple case of 'The Battle of the sexes'. Not anymore.
Because that may be an unhelpful way of looking at things.

Here are some broad categories of allegiances that are forming in the SMP.

1. The MGTOW
I had to start with this group. They are vocal. They are numerous. And they don't even want to play the game anymore.
The problem for a lot of women is distinguishing this man from his brother in category 2, because they are not just brothers, they may be fraternal twins. They share an awful lot of DNA.

2. The regular Manosphere citizen
This man is hard to define. He may straddle the MGTOW group. He has 'inner Game'. He is self-assured. His ducks are all lined up. He may be married or single or in a LTR.
No matter.
He knows he can exercise his options at any point in his life, a distinct feature he shares with the MGTOW. For the non-MGTOW amongst this group, the dating game is not necessarily easy, but they are not (at least not yet) fazed by it.

2. The 'not so nice woman'
The MGTOW has a few choice words for this woman, but in the interests of decorum, we shan't go there.
These women, according to the MGTOW are also numerous. They are also vocal. And by the sounds of things, I am willing to bet my bottom dollar that they are also highly visible.
Is this woman on the field? Or is she just cheering on the alpha male?

3. The 'nice girl'
My biggest interest for the moment is in this woman.
According to the MGTOW, she does not exist.

I have an alternative theory.

I think she does exist. And what's more, the MGTOW know that. But their biggest frustration with this woman is that she is hard to find.
She is too 'hidden from view'.

She is not too visible, because she has been misinformed about what 'visibility' means.
She thinks that to dress in a feminine way equates to being a 'siren'. To her, a 'siren' is a word which rhymes with rut.
So she hides herself in unflattering attire.

Some MGTOW have also made the point that this woman is in fact, a phony.
She portrays the illusion of a 'nice girl' but as soon as she gets what she wants, i.e. her claws deeply embedded in him, she unleashes her inner devil on him.

To this I would respond that all along, a woman like this is actually in category 2.
The category 2 woman has many faces.

So, the consensus seems to be that the 'nice girl' needs to come out more. She is in the crowd but no-one is seeing her. And when she comes out, she has to stay nice. Forever.

4. The 'mangina'
This man is derided by his brothers in the Manosphere. He is viewed as a traitor of the worst kind. His brothers would gladly take him out into the courtyard and give him a public flogging.
In fact they figuratively do that to him on Manosphere blogs all the time in a way that is both agonising to watch and fascinating.

Actually, I think there are two other kinds of 'mangina' in addition to the 'clueless whipping boy' described above.
A. The first is what I would call a 'principled' mangina. He is a 'whiteknight' because he genuinely loves women and believes that defending a woman is an honourable thing to do. He may hope it will also help his cause, i.e. to get a woman, but it is not necessarily his primary motivation.
This man, to some women, is actually a true alpha, and to the right woman, he will win. Sometimes though, this man gets disappointed by the very women he is 'whiteknighting' for, and may eventually turn into the other kind of 'mangina'. This man would really benefit from Game.

B. The 'disingenuous' mangina
This man actually hates women, but pretends to build her up when in fact he is only pushing her agenda where it directly or indirectly leads to a fulfilment of his own needs. A good example of this is a PUA who appears to push the feminist agenda. He will happily 'pump and dump' the same feminist whose counterproductive (to her) ideologies he promotes.

The officials
These are the organisations that from time to time, all the above players yell (in true MacEnroe style), "You cannot be serious!" to.

They are supposed to be officiating, but at some point or other, all the players feel aggrieved by their decisions.

1. The family courts
The MGTOW have had dealings with this official. And as a result, he has had several points deducted from his scorecard. This official and his family are now officially under a metaphorical death threat.

2. The Church
All the players, even the 'not so nice' women have their own gripes about this official.
This official's problem, to many, is his inaction. He was looking the other way when the handball offence was committed in football/soccer. And worse, he won't allow the video to be played to refute or confirm the offence.

3. The State/employer
This official, along with official no. 4 is killing the 'nice girl'. She gets married and wants to honour her husband but the State won't let her change her maiden name to her married one without jumping through massive hoops.
She has a baby and wants to go part-time and she is punished. She may not yet be ready to go SAHM straightaway, and wants to do it in stages to test the waters, but she gets a knock on the head for that. She makes a rash choice, and stays at work full time. And then she struggles. And then, because she cannot handle her inner conflict very well, her feminine nature suffers. Nice girl dead.

4. Feminism
This official is not even on the pitch. In that sense, he (she?) is the most frustrating of all. The players cannot even communicate with him (her?). They have to go through all the other officials first.

5. The ballboys and girls
They are not picking up the balls anymore. Because no-one is actually playing the game. These kids are running around the court aimlessly.

Did I leave anyone out?
I am sure you will tell me.

So who are the dissidents?
Some of the players? All the officials, or just some?
Who is playing who?
And why?

16 comments:

I see feminism as being the commisioner of the game, they highly influence the officials who make/enforce the rules.

i also see the MGTOW as the little whiny bitches of the group, it's "too hard" so they skate off the ice and don't play the game.

also do you include "game" blogs as part of the manosphere, or as a separate entity. if you are including it, i think another man category would be needed, as the "talent" say, the man who lives to interact and experience as many women as possible.

"Some MGTOW have also made the point that this woman is in fact, a phony.She portrays the illusion of a 'nice girl' but as soon as she gets what she wants, i.e. her claws deeply embedded in him, she unleashes her inner devil on him." <-BINGO!!

Hmm not necessarily, you see i think, and i'm sure most would agree, that there are to kinds of people that learn game. The righteous and the malicious.

the malicious learns game with malicious intent, he thinks he has been wronged in the past through heartbreak and rejection, so he turns to game as a mode of vengeance, his uses game to hurt and play psychotic mind games with women, and this amuses him since he's had it "so hard for so long"

the righteous turns to game to better themselves, to become happier, to have happier more fulfilling relationships, dates, flings and interactions with women, he does it to become more fulfilled as a person.

PUA arent just about feminism, its about our social psychology between the sexes. Though feminism has pushed "game" to be something you need to discover, to learn in a class and textbook context instead of learning it as you grow up inherently, through your father or your male mentors. It's all about being a better man really, if you don't become a better more confident man, then you havent learned game at all

This is an accurate description of what is going on in a very small sphere, comprising a handful of blogs.

In any case, it is very much NOT representative of the world at large, wherein the voices of "alpha dissent" - which are so vocal online - go largely unheard. On the rare occasion that they surface, they are dismissed as misogynists and the world returns to its course.

What is clear to me, however, is how much these ideas resonate with whoever stumbles across them. While the thoughts remain hidden for now on a small collection of blogs, I suspect that they are symptoms of a changing tide - premonitions of the ideological backlash that will slowly find its way into the mainstream.

Time will tell (I am thinking decades), but anything that strikes as much of a chord as it clearly does with the readers of the group of blogs you describe, is unlikely to remain hidden for very long.

Thanks for writing this. I'm fairly new to blogging and have been deeply puzzled at some of the friendships between between perfectly decent girls and PUAs. The Mixosphere describes that phenomenon perfectly. There are some truly disgusting blogs by men which get attention from girls who probably would do better to walk away if they encountered those men in real life.

And now, would you like to know why the nice girls are hiding? Nice girls get raked over the coals by every single one of the categories you describe, particularly the MGTOW. These men do not respect women; they make endless demands and criticisms and offer very little in return, and then turn around and pretend to be wounded by feminism. If you ask them, most of them have never met a feminist, so they take out their anger and frustration (over what?) on the nice girls. I know this because it's happened to me and it's a happened to a lot of nice girls I know. And when nice girls speak up, they get treated to the worst possible kinds of abuse. Where is the incentive to come out of hiding?

How nice to have another woman join us! A hearty welcome to you. I hope you stay for a long time.

I took a look at your blog too, and I love it! You are going on the blogroll if you don't mind.

I empathise with your feelings on today's SMP. I really do. It took a lot for me to come out of 'hiding' too. The men who have commented here have all made valid points, but the problem is, some of them are not exactly clear on who the real enemy is. Because the real enemy is not available for discussion. Who's left is you and me. So we get punished for someone else's sins...

On perusing your blog, I found this:

"Modern feminism looks like women who sacrifice every ounce of self respect in order to please immature, promiscuous men. It's hard to image a more degrading scenario for women to be in,"

Bingo.

The same men who benefit from these 'modern feminists' also detest them...and as it happens, every other woman too.

This is why life is not fair. We have been given lemons. We have to make lemonade. It will taste bitter but at least we won't go thirsty. And we can add a cube or two of sugar if it gets too bitter. So we shouldn't give up...

Thanks! I've linked to yours as well and look forward to reading more of your posts.

It's true that we have to make the best of the situation we're in, and frankly I'm happy to be living now and not at some point in the past when I probably would have been married off at 17 and died in childbirth at 18. So there's that. I completely agree that many men don't know who the enemy is, and I'm not totally sure who is always an enemy, either. There is a lot that's confusing about modern dating and marriage, and that can't be blamed solely on either side. But I've come to the conclusion that keeping silent about certain things is not the best way forward.

I just re-read this, after having a little spat about my post, "The Invisible Man" ... and I am caught by the exactitude of parallel between your "Nice Girl" and my "Invisible Man."

My thesis was that many a "good man" is overlooked because some woman's "date radar" is tuned to spot the exciting bad boys that bring on the tingles. Certainly I can see that works in reverse, too, with many a man overlooking the "nice girl" because his radar is tuned to spot the "hot chick."

If the "nice girl" from your postcould pair up with the "good man" from mine, I would hope that Love could somehow catalyze a couple that could live "happily ever after" ...

Beijaflor, the "good men" on your blog call women bitches and use incredibly rude and aggressive language while hiding behind a fake identity. That would be a terrible match. No nice girl is going to sign up for that.

A huge part of the problem is too much generalising and yes, this sick phenomenon of letting yourselves be used like blowup dolls for badboys is leaving many a good men alone and in pain.Yet doesn't this leave women used and alone in the end. The only ones who benefit are a few b.b., laughing at the rest of us, what a world! Women left a lot of good men behind, Thanks a lot!

A great bonus would be companionship, not a life of solitude to build character.Humans are built for companionship, without it your just a dreamer.The bb are laughing all the way to the bank!We are pretty sad as a people, something is terribly wrong and unnatural here or is it just me?